


shards of glass and bone

by bearold



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Drabbles, Dream Team SMP Angst (Video Blogging RPF), Dream Team SMP Spoilers, Established Relationship, Kind of..., King!George, Kissing, M/M, Mild Gore, Non-Linear Narrative, dream becomes a god and george struggles to cope, god + king AU, god!dream, i mean it's vaguely chronological but there are a bunch of time skips!, super mild just a description rly!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-17 16:48:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29103567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bearold/pseuds/bearold
Summary: Dream smiles so widely his lip splits, and George watches in silent horror as golden ichor spills out and down his chin instead of blood. There’s an alien light behind Dream’s eyes that plucks twinges of fear from deep in his chest."I found it."Or: Dream becomes a god and George struggles to navigate his humanity + mortality + love as Dream seemingly loses all of those things.
Relationships: Clay | Dream/GeorgeNotFound (Video Blogging RPF)
Comments: 23
Kudos: 134
Collections: Cleo's Ultimate Guide to Fanfiction





	shards of glass and bone

**Author's Note:**

> heavily inspired by the incredible technoblacle on tumblr (towerofthegods here on ao3), their god + king AU has been living in my brain for days on end now!! go check out their work "martyr wrapped in butcher paper" asalkdjf you won't regret it and it def provided inspiration for this fic!! 
> 
> hope you enjoy!!

In the before, there is a cottage that houses all three of them. There is fishing, and light, and love. There is a boy whose gaze lingers on the edge of the forest for just a beat too long. They are made up of bruised knees and sunburned cheeks, river cannonballs punctuated with whoops and delighted screams, fumbling fingers and clumsy kisses. They carve a home for themselves in the rich soil of the world around them, in the recesses of each other’s hearts.

* * *

Dream comes stumbling from the line of trees, the forest a gaping maw behind him and George is hurtling forward before he can manage a single thought. _dreamdreamdream_ pounds through his head in time with his racing pulse. Dream collapses into his arms and Sapnap helps George lower him gently to the ground, his head cradled in George’s lap. 

George ignores how Dream’s skin burns against his fingertips, focuses instead on brushing the hair away from his forehead. He’s fine. Everything’s fine, Dream’s going to be--

“What did you _do_?” Sapnap whispers hoarsely. None of them had taken Dream seriously when he said he’d found something in the woods. Something powerful and foreign, something other. 

Dream smiles so widely his lip splits, and George watches in silent horror as golden ichor spills out and down his chin instead of blood. There’s an alien light behind Dream’s eyes that plucks twinges of fear from deep in his chest. His teeth are white as sun-bleached bone, blinding, and George has the absurd urge to shield his eyes. Dream looks like he’s been dipped in melted gold. In the blood of a god. 

Silent tears spill down Sapnap’s cheeks. It’s George’s first clue that maybe something is more wrong than he’d thought. Something unsettling lingers over them, a sense of loss. George can’t help but think that whatever Dream had done had cost him something irreplaceable. 

Dream’s voice is reverent as he finally speaks, and the voice that rings through George’s ears buzzes with multiple overtones. Haunting, beautiful, terrifying. 

He whispers, but it screams through George like the voice of a thousand angels. 

“I found it.” 

* * *

“I could eat you alive, George.” 

Dream’s whisper burns against the column of George’s throat, where his lips and teeth press into delicate skin. Things have been different lately. Dream has been different. But right now, with the heat of Dream’s hands roaming across his ribs and the hard press of him against George, he finds he doesn’t really care. This, at least, remains. And George is so desperate for some piece of the old Dream, _his_ Dream, that he pushes down any whispers of fear and surges up into Dream, kissing him fiercely. 

His mind hums in liquid pleasure as Dream’s fingers play along his hipbones, callouses scraping along smooth skin. Any thoughts dissolve like spun sugar dipped in water, his focus narrowing to every point of contact between them. He loses himself in Dream, drowning himself willingly. 

Before, Dream had tasted like honey. He’d always had a penchant for sweets, and once George had disappeared into the kitchen with strict instructions for Dream not to bother him. Nearly a full day later, George had emerged, splattered with butter and streaked with flour, proudly holding a plate of sticky buns in honor of Dream’s birthday. 

Dream’s grin had been radiant, grateful and glistening with sticky traces after cramming a bun into his mouth whole. George had kissed him anyway, sugar dancing on his tongue. 

Now, Dream tastes like static electricity, the thick taste of ozone before a lightning strike. The taste is hollow on George’s tongue, leaves an ache long after Dream’s hands have left his skin.

* * *

Dream asks George to become king when they’re lying tangled up in each other as moonlight pools through their window. George lifts his hand, watches as the light paints his skin silver, as his mind whirls to comprehend what Dream is asking of him. 

Dream is ascending so rapidly, so smoothly amassing power and status and influence that the boy George was before doesn’t stand a chance in this world. Dream doesn’t need a boy--he needs a king. And so a king George will become. 

When Dream asks him to become king, George kills a part of himself. Kills the boy who chases lightning bugs with leaves tangled in his hair, who drinks from the burbling creek with water spilling down his throat and soaking the front of his shirt, who trips after Dream with laughter bubbling through his ribs, secure in the knowledge that as long as Dream’s hand is latched around his wrist, nothing can go wrong. 

He kills that part of himself. 

He’ll do anything if it means Dream will stay. 

Dream’s hand joins his, calloused fingers tracing the delicate bones of George’s wrist, and George has made his decision.

* * *

It’s almost too easy to fall into the role of the apathetic king. The truth is, he really doesn’t care. The squabbles they come to him with turn into harsh buzzing, the demands they make fall on deaf ears. George really couldn’t care less about the factions forming along their borders, couldn’t care less about one of them gaining more resources or strength than the other. 

The only thing that matters to him are Sapnap and Dream. Keeping them alive, keeping them here. 

And as Dream’s power grows, so too does the resentment against George. George, who became king by divine right and no true desire of his own or anyone else’s, who sits on the throne and lets dissent grow without lifting a finger, who is made of bored, lazy smiles and empty eyes. 

The only thing that keeps him rooted to that throne is the pleased grin that hangs from Dream’s lips. 

They’re arguing in front of him, clamoring for attention and making demands. George simply gives them that lofty, heavy lidded look. They turn to quarrel amongst themselves, knowing that George won’t do anything of substance. How can he? His power is as flimsy as his fraying link to the man he loves. 

A smile splits his face at the absurdity of it all, while George tries to ignore the ache spreading through his chest. 

“What’s so funny?” Dream asks from beside him, shoulders tipped down towards George but eyes trained on the argument in front of them, tracking each movement. 

How is George supposed to tell him that these people mean nothing to him? That they’re ants to him, insignificant and meaningless and it’s laughable that Dream thinks he could care about this. But here, on this throne, he’s at Dream’s side. The proximity is fleeting and a mockery of what they used to have but this is the closest he can get. Better this than nothing at all. 

This is who Dream needs, so this is who he’ll become. 

For Dream, he’ll pretend that nothing beats underneath his skin but shadows, that the blood in his veins is nothing but dishonesty and falsehood, empty eyes and cold grins. 

Dream may have been the first to cover his face. But he isn’t the only one who wears a mask.

* * *

Dream had been the peacekeeper, once. Sapnap and George teased and poked and prodded near constantly, but after a joke pushed too far, one too many lines crossed, their bickering sometimes escalated into real anger. 

George’s temper had always been a match—quick to light and even quicker to snuff. Sapnap’s was more sustained, equipped with sharp barbs from a quicksilver tongue that always left George smarting. But somehow Dream always knew what to say. Reassurances poured from his lips like honeyed wine, soothing each of their jagged edges. Somehow, he always knew how to piece them back together. 

George watches now as Dream’s temper explodes to life, a seething, writhing thing. 

The child—Tommy, George thinks—stands tall but his eyes are bright with unshed tears, his clenched jaw trembling. Dream towers over him and threats spew from his lips like the crack of a whip. A giddy laugh wracks Dream’s frame, drunk on power, as he proclaims the terms of banishment. Wrath is written into the lines of his body, sharp angles and stark shadows. With a sudden pang, George misses the softness of golden curls, the pliant give of Dream’s smiling cheek under his thumb. He misses the rounded edges of Dream’s whispers as they’d stay up until the moon hung high, trading secrets. He misses--

He’s startled out of his reverie by another of Dream’s shouts, and George watches as ravenous jaws snap, hungry for retribution. 

* * *

It’s in his fall that George discovers how very human he still is. It’s in his fall that he realizes that Dream has been ascending this whole time, while George has been toiling fruitlessly next to him, blood and sweat and bone and pretending desperately not to be. It’s in his fall that he realizes just how much it’ll hurt when he hits the ground. 

George is a mess of singed feathers and stinging sweat, Icarus flown too close to the sun. 

The dethronement hurts. Not because he cared about being king, even the stars above know George has never cared about being king. It hurts because it’s the final proof that Dream no longer needs him. No longer wants him. No longer loves him. 

“Just tell me you hate me,” George whispers up at him, painfully vulnerable and all too human in this moment. He can nearly feel Dream recoiling from the mess of bloody red pulp that George has opened his chest to reveal, his emotions exposed for all to see. 

All George sees when he looks up at Dream is the unblemished porcelain of his mask. Idly, he considers if Dream can even feel his emotions anymore, just one more thing godhood has whisked away and replaced with blinding cold light. Maybe he doesn’t even have the capacity for hate anymore. Maybe he hasn’t for a long time—George had just chosen to be blind to how Dream has been shifting, changing, losing his ties to humanity with every day that passes. He’d just never thought the day would come that Dream lost his ties to George, too. 

A desperate, wild fear tears through him. He wants to scream in Dream’s face, wants to tear this world up by it’s roots, wants to track down whatever it was that had stolen Dream from him and rip its entrails out in grisly red ropes. 

He wants Dream to protest. To reassure George that he loves him, cares for him, needs him. 

Dream doesn’t respond, but something in the way his masked face tilts down towards George speaks of heartbreak. 

It’s all he can offer to George. 

It isn’t enough. 

George runs. 

* * *

Months pass in a blur, and time becomes elastic. Days pass like honey, stretching and dripping off a spoon. But the sound of Sapnap’s fist banging on his door so hard that the wood creaks manages to catch George’s attention. 

He wrenches the door open to reveal Sapnap, breathing hard, expression stricken. His mouth works uselessly, and he finally meets George’s gaze, eyes wide and helpless. George resists the urge to crush him into a hug and bury his nose into his friend’s skin, instead tugging him inside and manhandling him into a cushy armchair. 

“Tell me what happened.” It has to be Dream. Sapnap wouldn’t have come out all this way for anything but him. 

Sapnap’s voice starts out low, shaky, but he gains speed and confidence as he goes on. As he tells George about everything Dream had done. Nearly murdering Tubbo in cold blood, the vault of people’s attachments, his imprisonment.

“He’s…it was sick, George,” Sapnap says lowly, voice threaded with disgust and hurt. “It’s like he doesn’t even see us as people anymore, as if he’s not one of us,” he scoffs. 

_Attachment._ The word clangs through George, echoing through the empty cavity of his chest. Hands traveling across tawny skin dotted with sunspots and freckles, the glint of his smile in buttery swaths of sunshine, the lilt and cadence of his voice promising, _“I’d do anything for you, George. You know that.”_ All miles, eons away. 

“He’s not,” George says weakly, his mind far away. “He’s not human. He hasn’t been for a long time.” 

* * *

Dream’s hand cups his jaw with infinite tenderness. Its at odds with the knife he holds to George’s throat. He’s standing so close that George can feel the warm pass of his breath stirring his eyelashes, and the position is so intimate George can almost forget that Dream is here to kill him. Almost. All things considered, it hadn’t taken Dream very long at all to find George. He’d known it was only a matter of time before Dream broke out of the prison—there wasn’t a cell in the world that could hold him.

“You’re my attachment, George,” Dream tells him sadly.

In a distant part of George’s mind he supposes it makes sense. After all, Dream clearly thought that controlling attachment was the key to power. If someone controlled his own attachment, he’d be putting every ounce of that power into jeopardy. Better to get rid of the loose ends while he still could, right? 

George nearly scoffs to himself. Even after all this, he’s still finding a way to justify Dream’s actions. His life hangs by a thread and all George can think about is the almost-but-not-quite green shade of Dream’s eyes, how this wouldn’t be the worst sight in the world to die to. Dream was what he lived for, once. Was it really so bad to die by his hand?

… 

Dream considers, for a moment, how it would go. The slick feel of George’s flesh against blessed steel, the scrape of bone against metal. How blood would bloom, red as poppies, against his lips. The slick, lethargic drip of it, down George’s chin, how it would cling to his neck and pour in rivulets down his collarbones. 

How George would watch Dream through it all, gaze undefeated and challenging him until the last breath left his lungs. His dark eyes, fringed with thick lashes that Dream had loved so much, losing their light indefinitely. Dream’s hands against his pulse, the beat of it against his thumb a drum of life until it stuttered, finally stopped. 

He’ll bring him back, Dream reasons. The knife presses deeper and blood beads along the blade. George tilts his neck up, exposing the vulnerable column of his throat to bite deeper into the blade and there’s complete trust in his eyes. Resignation, acceptance. That this is the monster Dream has become, that this is who George has fallen in love with. That he’s powerless to do anything but watch, and even if he wasn’t, George would never stop him. 

Seconds pass, and Dream feels like his world is on fire. All he can feel is the heat of George standing so close to him, flames licking up his skin where it meets George’s. The hum of life that buzzes beneath his mortal skin, the rush of heady blood in his veins. 

He hesitates. 

Holding George, something in Dream breaks. His long dormant heart stutters to life, kicking in the cluttered cage of his chest, full of dead leaves and long forgotten memories. But this, but George. George is more than attachment. George is everything to him. George is his salvation, his mercy. 

George’s hand is on his wrist. His slim fingers wrap gently around Dream’s burning skin, and the knife clatters to the ground. The sound of it shatters something in Dream, some spell that had held him over the precipice of a decision he could’ve never come back from. Dream collapses in George’s arms and he’s forgotten what it feels like to breathe. His lungs ache as air billows through them. But he breathes deeper and pain burns and crawls up his chest but it’s George, this pain is George, and the scent of him is wrapped around Dream as George cradles him.

Dream wishes he could cry. He settles for clutching himself to George, settles for whispering a thousand apologies against his skin in a language George doesn’t understand. But he is on his knees, repentant. He begs for forgiveness in the way his fingers dig into George’s slender shoulders, and George grants it, a hand passed over the head of his supplicant. They cling together, as the night wears on and neither can tell where one ends and the other begins. 

* * *

In the after, they are broken and remade and broken again. They are shards of glass and bone but there’s enough of them left to piece back together. Some semblance of what they had been once. Hesitant touches and bated breath, tiptoeing to build a new normal. Perhaps not quite what they were, but enough. To be near each other is enough, for now. 

The sun rises, and washes their world in gilded light. 

**Author's Note:**

> thank you thank you thank you for reading!! 
> 
> in other news this fic was propelled by me listening to "other side of paradise" by glass animals on repeat for 5 days, a lot of george and dream's dynamic here was inspired by that song!! i know we're all familiar with their album dreamland courtesy of heat waves, BUT this is my official nomination for their second album to receive the hype it deserves, truly one of my fave albums of all time!! 
> 
> that is all, feedback always appreciated!!


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